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Abstract

Part of manufacturers’ responsibility when bringing out new products is to consider their environmental footprint. The legal supply chain combines hardware/software delivery, granting on-duty conformance to use preservation, and end-of-life take-back, with compulsory recovery targets. These entrepreneurial competencies appear externally, in respect to old manufacturing practices, which were internal. Networking options provide fundamental technological aids. This chapter analyses some technologically-driven solutions which stand out for the exploitation of net concerns at these three integration levels: business project co-operation, through spot-wise agreements; the factually united organisation or virtual corporation; joint and several liability, or extended corporation. The checks are centered on the bottom up series of appraisals, to evidence the return on investment from below so that the partnership permanently spurs motivation and fosters competition through properly established facilities/functions integration into unified competitive entrepreneurial organisations.

Introduction

Ecology requires dramatic changes in industrial economic trends. The affluent society paradigm, based on manufacturing efficiency, transforming raw materials into mass products, quickly increases pollution and waste and is facing imminent limitations to safeguard mankind’s future. It is difficult to accept the today’s population approach that it is their absolute privilege to exploit the earth’s resources. They seem to feel their entitlement is based on being the first to obtain possession. The impending eco-regulation is an entangled issue made rather critical in times of economic recession, as mandatory restraints are seen as severe changes and forbidding full access to immediately spendable riches.

In this chapter we outline the knowledge entrepreneurship way out of this issue (Michelini, 2008), based on value added intangibles and assured by two main opportunities:

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the resort to product-service deliveries, imposed as the lifestyle manufacturers’ responsibility;

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and the net-concerns efficiency, obtained by clustering facility/function fit-for-purpose capacities.

The issue is a technology-driven construct, offered by information and communication aids, aimed at advanced entrepreneurial settings. The emerging net-concerns have to incorporate the Information and Communication Technology as instrumental business support of lifestyle supply chains. The technicalities cover a series of prospects showing the readily available mix of opportunities: